


The Pity War Distilled

by reine_des_corbeaux



Category: 1917 (Movie 2019), The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Crossover, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Horror, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-08
Updated: 2020-11-08
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:54:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27181417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reine_des_corbeaux/pseuds/reine_des_corbeaux
Summary: William Schofield meets the War.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 12
Collections: Trick or Treat Exchange 2020





	The Pity War Distilled

**Author's Note:**

  * For [plastics](https://archiveofourown.org/users/plastics/gifts).



Schofield’s frightened in the ruined town, though he tries to stay brave. He thinks it may be the silence, or what might perhaps be better-designated the lack of any human sound. Though Will knows that the rattling fire of guns and the boom of artillery are sounds made by things which require a human to operate, together in the darkness they sound more like the full-throated cries of some vast, dark creature crouching in the ruined shadows of rubble-strewn streets and the bombed-out husks of buildings that point like teeth into a grey sky. 

Even so, he knows what he has to do, where he has to go, and that he must push down the mourning for a while yet and stop thinking of Tom where he left him. To stop thinking of him as Tom at all, really. War is no time for Christian names, just as it is no time to stop and look at trees cut down while still in blossom, or take any peaceful rolling field for granted. Better to think of him as Blake and Blake alone, and to keep moving futilely forwards to find Tom’s brother and bring him news of his brother’s death. He cannot pause, and he cannot let the fear get to him. It must instead lodge back in his bones where it belongs, forever stowed away 

Really, Will thought that there would have been time enough for cherry trees for him and Tom 

(and no, no, it must be Blake. He must forget he is a man and be a soldier for a little while, and maybe he might live to save a life and see the end of this infernal war, for his family’s sake, if not his own). If Schofield cannot see his way out of this disaster, if he dies in a rain of German bullets in some ruined, muddy town in France, then countless men will die, and Joseph Blake will never know that his brother lies dead in a ruined orchard. So Will Schofield pushes down his fear and he runs. 

It’s in a quiet street in the dead town that he hears the music again, the soft, maddening piping he sometimes hears just above the guns and chalks up to the Scottish regiment he knows is somewhere nearby, fighting with the rest. Even if it sounds like no song played by any military band that Schofield’s ever heard, the piper’s music is martial, a call to arms and battle. He almost likes it, or at least finds it comforting. But now, in the quiet, he remembers that the last time he heard the piper’s song was not in the trenches, but in the very quiet of No Man’s Land. And now, in the town, among the skeletons of homes and lives, he hears it all again. 

_He’ll alert someone,_ Schofield thinks, with a panicky kind of anticipation. And then, another thought entirely strikes him. _Maybe that’s what he wants._ And that’s enough to fill him with the kind of all-consuming fear that sticks a man in his place, blinding him in the face of battle and certain death, or freezing him as he lies in a trench and thinks that the world must be hell now, all its vanities forgotten against the obscene roaring of the guns. And because Schofield is only a man when all is ended and all is counted, he freezes where he stands. 

There seems to be a great mist rising up around him, protecting and blotting out the buildings, and that too sends the fear stabbing through Schofield. He cannot see. He can only hear the piping. Any sniper crouched in some sightless window might leap out and take his life with a single well-aimed bullet. But the fog shrouds all, and the smell of gunpowder and rot fills his nose, as everything thickens and congeals around him and the mist takes on the greenish shimmer of gas. 

In the great, heavy blanket of mist, thick as sea-fog, Schofield sees a figure, lumpen in shape, jerky as a puppet as it moves towards him with light, swift steps. And as it comes, so too does the piping, in all its insistence, calling Schofield to a battle he cannot yet join. Around the figure, the fog parts, and Schofield cannot quite comprehend what it is that he sees. Though the fear grips him, he cannot flee. 

It’s no man that approaches Schofield, or rather it is something shaped rather like a man, and not an especially tall one either. But beyond the vague outline of its form, Schofield sees that it is not really a man at all, but rather instead an amalgamation of limbs, of bleeding wounds and sharp bayonets and pipes of bone. Looking on the War, for that is what this must be, is like looking on something that is at once no man’s land and mass grave, all bombastic propaganda and hideous reality warped into one many-limped and multi-faced man-thing. It cannot be anything but the War, and Schofield cannot help but sink to his knees and look upon it in awe. When it takes its lips from the pipe, the War exhales a cloud of gas, and Schofield instinctively gropes for his mask and cannot find it. He smells its stench, and yet it does not choke him. It passes around him as though he is encased in glass. Only the fear penetrates the barrier, with all its clawing fingers. 

He wants to live, oh God, he wants to live, not die face-to-face with the War itself, and what can the War want with him? He’s only Will Schofield. No one ever asked him if the whole world should go to war. No one ever gave him a choice. But now, the War looks at him. It looks at him and it lets him choose. It’s not much of a choice, between these three faces, each a different way to die, but it’s enough of a choice that Schofield, instead of running, reaches out a hand to the thing. He stretches his fingers, cramped from their time clawed around a rifle, towards the figure. He chooses. 

If the War had a truly human face, something more than the screams and terror present there now, Schofield thinks that face would have smiled. Instead, it’s still a horrifying mirage before him, but Schofield is grateful for that. He thinks the smile would have been more frightening. 

The War has many arms, and all of them hold weapons, the instruments of killing of a thousand arrows. But one hand is empty. It raises itself to Schofield like a flag of surrender, and Schofield thinks of his family. He thinks of his missions, He knows that he has to survive, even if in the end, he must survive only to pay this macabre piper. Schofield inclines his head towards the War. It seems only respectful. 

“I don’t know what you want,” he says, and his voice shakes with fear. “But I’ll take it if that lets me live.” 

The War turns, and catches Schofield in its half-dead gaze. It’s paralyzing, even as it fills him with adrenaline. But even so, he reaches out his hand to the hand of the War as the War opens its mouth. Schofield doesn’t know if it’s speaking or screaming, but he does know that it holds out a pen to him, slim and white and made of carved bone. As it holds out a pen, the War holds out a life, it holds out an escape, and it holds out a debt. Schofield takes the pen. He doesn’t know what horrors that might lead to, and whether it might draw him back to this place of mist and horror, but he knows the War has given him a gift of life, or at least of borrowed time. And so, with pen and gun, he runs. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for the excellent prompts-- given the option for a TMA AU, I couldn't help but loosely cross 1917 over with MAG 7 (blame my lifelong obsession with the war poets). It just worked too well. Hope you enjoy! 
> 
> Title drawn from Wilfred Owen's "Strange Meeting."


End file.
